Cinema is a medium of faces. In a dark cinema, no matter you are watching romance, action, comedy or a film of whichever genre, the silver screen is showing you faces of the actors and actresses most of the time. Faces of all kinds tell stories of all kinds. “CINEMA 2.0: Dark Mirrors” reflects, like a mirror, faces that you have encountered or never thought of, and through which you see yourself as much as you see others.

The artist collected hairs, chewed up gum, and cigarette butts from the streets, public bathrooms and waiting rooms of New York City. She extracted DNA from them and analysed it to computationally generate 3D printed life size full colour portraits representing what those individuals might look like, based on genomic research.

Korean artist duo Shinseungback Kimyonghun bring with them four works that work with face detection: Portrait detects faces in a movie on a per second basis and compresses them into one. You cannot see your face when looking into Nonfacial Mirror as soon as it detects your face. Cloud Face collects patterns of cloud that the computers see as face – and sometimes humans do. FADTCHA, on the contrary, tests whether you can detect faces in patterns that only computers do.

An ape on a TV screen can speak out verses freely using 3D animation techniques. eternal return / op.1 covers phrases from Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”, whereas eternal return / op.2 is cited from Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of “superman (übermenschen)”. The artwork coveys an immortal message to mankind to provoke a sense of obligation for the time being.

18/3 (Sun) | 4pm | Curator Guided Tour

Curator Ip Yuk-yiu will lead the guided tour and share with visitors his curatorial concepts.